Gluten-free Gourmand

You’ve made your gluten free sourdough starter . What now?   The discard, or unused portion of the starter can be repurposed in a number of ways.  It’s the part of the starter that you don’t need to refresh or to use to leaven bread. You can throw it out, or you can use it to replace some of the flour and water in other recipes.  It adds a great texture and flavor to recipes, and it’s particularly useful for gluten free recipes. There’s something about gf grains that benefits immensely from the fermentation process. They become more flexible, more workable, and much tastier. In this bread recipe the sourdough starter lends the bread strength, flexibility, and flavor. Why is it not a regular sourdough bread?  This bread is considered a discard bread, or sometimes called a hybrid loaf, because it contains sourdough but it's leavened with commercial yeast. What does it taste like?   Depending on the ingredients used, this bread can taste anywhere from very mild or even bland to very y

 If you are gluten-free, or just want to experiment with gluten-free bread, creating a sourdough starter is the first step.  I've found a few ways to do this very quickly and reliably.  While no starter method can claim to be foolproof, I think this one is very reliable. Ivory Teff Starter at peak  My starter is shown just past peak here and starting to collapse after doubling Awhile back I posted a recipe for a gluten-free sourdough starter that is ready to use in 3-7 days .  While I still like this method, I've found that it's a bit fussy and it takes some special equipment to heat the starter.  This 5-day method takes no special equipment other than some bowls and jars. My method is a modification of the technique seen in this video by Julia Child and Joe Ortiz.  Here is the video that was the inspiration for this teff starter method. Caution: this video contains wheat! Why does this starter method work?  Somehow this method of creating a starter circumvents the stage wh

Last year, my mom asked me to recreate a scone recipe that she liked from a local gluten free bakery.  They made a walnut raspberry scone recipe she just loved and missed after they closed down. I tried several iterations, adding more and more walnuts until the recipe was 50% walnuts.  It never really tasted nutty.  Much later she was able to get the recipe from the owners of the bakery.  It turned out that the secret to walnutty scones is to toast the walnuts. This really brings the flavor forward.  Mom, we lost you before I could make these for you again.  Happy Valentine’s Day. Here is my interpretation of walnut raspberry scones.  Recipe for Walnut Raspberry Scones To toast the walnuts, preheat the oven to 350 degrees f.  Place a little over 1/3 cup walnuts in a single layer on a baking sheet.  Bake in the preheated oven for 5 minutes  remove from the oven, stir/turn over, and bake another 5 minutes.  Remove from the oven and cool. For the scones: Preheat the oven to 425 f.  Pulse

Growing up, my dad would bake a loaf of sourdough every weekend. I loved that bread. It was nice and tart.  When we’d take trips to San Fransisco we’d get some local bread and compare to my dad’s.  The sourness level was comparable. Of course I was biased, but I thought my dad’s bread was just as good. About 12 years ago I started trying to recreate my dad’s recipe in a gluten free version. I’ve done a lot of research on the topic of sourness in sourdough in order to reverse-engineer my dad's San Fransisco style sourdough recipe to make it gluten free. There is more info out there about wheaten/rye baking so that became the basis of most of my research. There are a lot of factors in the flavor of your home-baked sourdough product: the starter, the method, and the ingredients. Starter You don’t necessarily have to create a special starter for sour bread.  However, there are a few things that might help. Use the starter after peak, even well after its optimal window for yeast growth.

It's been awhile since I posted the original Grain-free Sandwich Bread Recipe.  That recipe contained an single egg... this one doesn't.  To span that gap took endless testing, but here I am with my new egg-free recipe, and it's better than ever! When I make this recipe it fills the house with the most amazing scent of baking bread.  But what I like the most about it is how fluffy this bread is, and how flexible. The egg replacer here is flax seed.  It wasn't an exact swap though.  I had to make some other alterations, including reducing the starches.  However, the result is every bit as fluffy, maybe fluffier, than the original. A few helpful affiliate links to give you an idea of what tools and ingredients are needed: A stand mixer.  You can hand mix but this tool makes it much easier with gluten-free dough.  I use the Kitchenaid Artisan Stand Mixer  in black. I use a 4x4x9  USA Steel Pullman Loaf pan  - the lid is optional but I do use it. I got the buckwheat flour